I think people are reading way too far into this.

Every team has talented freshmen who see less playing time because they aren’t ready. If anything, I’ve seen us play more freshmen than normal over the past two years. True “day 1 starters” are exceedingly rare, especially among non-early enrollees.

You mentioned Jefferson and Womack. Jefferson is really an outlier in that he’s not a “young player” - he was in the 2019 class at WVU. That said, someone brought up a good point about how the tempo impacted our defensive rotation. This is going to affect the DL more than anything because those guys rotate the most. In hindsight the staff probably should have put Jefferson in to start more drives, though.

It sounds like Womack was in the doghouse for something. I know many don’t agree with that kind of discipline, but it’s been a focus under Kelly and I don’t foresee it changing.

But my larger point with respect to the younger players would be this: the fact that we’ve seen Whit Weeks, Ashton Stamps, Da’Shawn Womak, Kaleb Jackson, and Lance Heard play meaningful snaps at all should already tell you Kelly isn’t afraid to play young guys. All of those guys are true freshmen, and it’s not at all typical to have that many true freshmen playing this early.

On top of that you have the evidence from last year with Campbell, Jones, Taylor, and Perkins.

Anyone who doesn’t think Kelly is willing to play those guys is ignoring the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. People are arguing over whether Weeks and Womack should be #1 at their positions but we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if Kelly truly valued experience over everything, as people like to suggest.